Ragazzo perso, dove siete andato?
by Quiet Requiem
Summary: (Lost boy, where have you gone?) A broken being formerly known as Harry Potter, and a dark man who survived, Severus Snape. Small armageddons and their aftermath; rebuilding the Boy Who Lived.
1. Chapter 1: Anywhere

Author: Quiet Requiem.  
  
Disclaimer: If you felt like suing me for copyright infringement, I doubt anything I could say would deter you.   
  
Rating: R for pathos.  
  
Warnings: Slash; semiwidespread modern slavery mentioned; angst, angst, angst.  
  
Author's Warnings: Second draft, unbeta'd, creative misuse of the english language. Input is appreciated.  
  
Forgotten what time was. Just an endless circle of hurt and much too loud and too much silence. Given up on it stopping, just an endless circle of hurt for all eternity. Forgotten what giving up was, forgotten what anything was outside of Now and Just Happened other than memories of what to do, what not to do.  
  
Memories like an already-vague shape dancing in your blindspot. Remembered not hurting but couldn't remember what it was like not to hurt. Confused when Now suddenly became the memories but knew escaping hurt was impossible. Frightened when Now and Just Happened started to become more like the yesterdays that never happened but still rememberedfeltknew hurt and waited for it to end, like when the hurt became too much and everything went fuzzy and calm only to come back and the fuzzy and calm was remembered as hurt.  
  
Saw a person who didn't change. Remembered faces who cycled predictably but became erratic when the hurt got too bad, or they changed it because they knew the pattern was seen. Wanted to believe it wasnt' all a memory that lied to him about not hurting but not willing to try; something said it was better to not hope. Wasn't sure why, but a fuzzy shape in his mental blindspot promised to tell one day.  
  
Eventually Now stopped moving with hurt and he dared to look up. Saw dark and forboding and knewknewknew hurt was coming because they had forbbiden him to look at them. Whimpered and begged but knew hurt wasn't escapable. Hands and he screamed and everything went black because hurt was coming because hurt always came when they touched him, came at other times, but always when they put their hands on him.  
  
-------  
  
Severus narrowly resisted the urge to throw something out the window. Normally, such rage would be better directed, but the causes of this bout of anger were long since dead. And, as Minverva had told him -- repeatedly, since he had asked the same question of the acting Headmistress just as repeatedly -- that There wasn't a way to bring people back from the dead so they could be tortured and killed again and yes, Severus, she would tell him if any were found, and how is, sad smile, he doing?  
  
Both of them knew she wasn't asking after Severus' health but of the everything-but-dead young man who had come into his care little more than an ocean of scars and fresher wounds stretched across bones, a few of which hadn't been religiously broken. Until recently, the reply had been as uniformly the same as Minverva's own, which was to say, "He's alive." He attempted not to show his own pain at the thought that existence could be the best that could be said, but the two of them had taken to turning away for a moment for a moment to allow the other the slip.  
  
"Albus..," she would say, "Albus would've been so very... He would've appreciated what you're doing, Severus."  
  
"I'm not doing this for what others want or think."He would try to ignore the faint simper on the Headmistresses' lips that said to him, 'And that's what makes it such a wonderful thing.' Because then he'd have to admit he'd changed, that Minerva had changed, that the world had changed and now the dark man was caring for one of the living artefacts, an abandoned weapon for an abandoned battle.  
  
Serverus was positive there was either a moral to the story, or at least a healthy dose of irony. But staring out the window at a darkening sky, hard pressed was he to bother to figure which.  
  
--------  
  
Six months, three weeks and six days. He could count the hours with ease as this began when the sun first kissed the horizon farewell as night came. Nearly seven months since he'd been handed the task of teaching the Boy-Who-Lived once again.  
  
This time, however, his student hadn't been as quietly rebellious, throwing off authority to do this good deed or maybe to run to see that girl. Harry had been quiet, certainly, but the capability of rebellion had been literally sucked from his mind, from his flesh. Such was the legacy of the Neo-Imperio Project for the Control of Uncontrollable Magic.   
  
No longer an unforgivable his ghost white /ass/. Nobody saw what became of those who had been 'treated' by the post-Reconvergence Imperius variants as they'd all died shortly after. From hopelessness, from weakness, or from suicide as they saw what their compatriots in Imperio had suffered.  
  
"Harry?" Green eyes moved in response. Severus still hadn't been able to discern whether such replies were recognition to the name, or just to his voice. "Harry, the Medi-Wizard needs to perform his tests again. To make sure you're still healt--. That you're not sick."  
  
He couldn't say to anyone else or even aloud to himself that Harry didn't understand. His voice would break and he would break, and then hope would die a little more. Denial told him that Harry's silence was his agreement to the checkup. Managed a smile and went to fetch the man from the kitchen where Serverus had left him with a cup of tea.   
  
It had taken him ten minutes to work up the nerve to open the door to Harry's room. Having someone see his charge's problems made them obvious to himself and it hurt. It fucking burned, a searing agony that shriveled his skin and melted fat and flesh from bone and made Cruciatus seem a mercy.  
  
Or maybe that was just the effect of having the center of your world be little better than catatonic. Whose fellows in recovery were usually dumped in the equivalent of St. Mungo's, cared for like the insane. Or killed out of mercy to those who knew the why's.  
  
The Medi-Wizard -- Jorge Rsomethingorother, neither of them cared if Severus ever learned the name -- gave Harry a clean bill of (physical) health. Asked a few cut questions about the progress on the mental front and met a few cutting answers that read: Don't fucking ask me, I'll kill you, only with less social nicety.  
  
As Jorge Whatever had no new progress to report from the private researchers investigating the long-term effects of the Control treatment, he was ushed to the exit, barely reporting the time of the next checkup before the door slam unceremoniously in his face.  
  
Almost seven months. Total catatonia for five weeks. No response to external stimuli for two months, and no solid recognition to it for another month after that. Quick progress to Harry's vocalizations gave him a spark of hope which had slowly been extinguished after the months of no change.  
  
Serverus had been told since the very start that the farthest Harry would recover would be equivalent to late infancy, if he survived at all. The withdrawls from the magic which garnered submission to the magic-controlling programming had a tendancy to make involuntary cerebral resposes cease to fire.  
  
For a few weeks, a little terror had settled on the Potions Master each time Harry had exhaled. Maybe it would be the last?  
  
Diagnosis had changed as the medi-magic community assimilated the former-Muggle science community into itself. Later disgusted to find momentary delight in the fact that Harry might reach the mental state of an autistic nine year-old boy.   
  
That was four months in. Since then, he'd stopped listening to their warnings and reports and findings even as Jorge had shown him the papers and explained it to him.  
  
Smoothing the hair from the not-quite-so-young Potter's forehead as the man sleeped, Severus found a tear working its way down his cheek. He wanted it to go back. Before. Before everything.  
  
Wanted Harry to be a little boy who hated him like all children hated their harsher teachers. Whole and as happy as could be expected. He would give up his own life to know Harry Potter would smile and laugh and wear that infernal cloak and spend a summer with that on again, off again convict, Black. Wanted a reality where the only thing that could defeat the Boy-Who-Lived might be Voldemort, not the magical backlash from those /idiots/ --  
  
Wide eyes looked up at him, a sea of innocent green unsettled with fear that he'd be hurt. Severus calmed himself and smiled and left the bedroom before he frightened Harry further.  
  
He then went into the deepest floor of the mannor and cried, and cried, and cried.   
  
Severus stroked Harry's hair as usual, long fingers sliding across soft brown that had grown to well past the young man's now-wasted shoulders. He did this quite often, needing to feel Harry if he couldn't talk to Harry. Usually sat for hours on end just stretched out perpendicular to him, running his fingers through the strands and just losing himself in thought.  
  
It was nice being close to someone and not having anything expected from him. Counted and recounted the scars on the flesh that was growing pale; Harry refused to open his eyes in the sunlight, so neither ventured outside the manor anymore. The scars shouldn't have existed, but potions and the most talented Medi-Witch money could buy had no effect, other than topical care little better than your ordinary doctor.  
  
Severus had gathered that Harry disliked being placed on his stomach, so the marks from lash and cane were easy to forget about. The front held a few lines where the back's wounds had been unable to stay within the lines of his spine and crawled to decorate Harry's sides; one particularly vicious slash ran to the navel. The scar was a massive band of tissue on the back, also.  
  
Mostly, his front was decorated in scars from unhealed abrasions, most likely rope and chain. Magical restraints were ineffective with the antimagic that the 'patients' were forced to exude, so the harm caused by the mundane bondage was caused by ignorance or sadism.  
  
Sadism was easy to tell from the rest of the still, thin body.  
  
Everyone had been changed by the Reconvergence, inside and out. But where some had blossomed and thrived, becoming a respected Wizard in this new world, many more were casualties, walking wounded and decaying dead.  
  
Pained, Severus began to remove himself from the bed and his attentions on Harry when a noise stopped him. Wide eyed and instantly shaking, he ventured to look into emerald eyes. They were downcast which only happened when, he'd guessed, Harry was afraid or thought he was being punished --  
  
The almost-silent keening sound stuck with him. It took ten minutes of repositioning before Severus arranged himself to lie closer to Harry, able to move his arms freely and watch those seemingly dead eyes. He ran the back of his hand down the cheek of the unresponding face and back up. Tangled into Harry's hair and petted, then released and stroked.  
  
Perhaps he had imagined it, and still could not dare to hope, but he thought he saw Harry's eyes escape their perpetual unfocus as they stared into his own in response. In response to his touch.  
  
Severus redoubled his efforts to remain in direct physical contact with Harry as often as possible. 


	2. Subchapter 1: Name

Wasn't torture like this supposed to have a face you can remember? Someone who used to be beneath you now your tormentor, familiarity driving home the punishment for being a good person. Nice guys finish last and all that, so somebody must be finishing first.  
  
But there isn't. Nameless faces as anonymous as he's been told to become, the foreign ache that tells him it's what he /wants/ to become. Of course, that ache tells him that no, he really shouldn't fight back when the ugly man with the blond hair decided to be particularly cruel, so he knows he shouldn't listen.  
  
The the ache becomes a searing burn and reminds him that direct rebellion isn't tolerated. Whups.  
  
But at least that pain's better than the other one, the hole seemingly carved into his heart and soul with a... well, something not particularly good at carving, so it takes a lot longer to complete and hurts like hell afterwords and never really heals and he'll never be whole again so why are you fighting, it's better to give in, it only hurts if you fight, Harry --  
  
-- can't tell if it's the ache or the source of his pain that calls his name but when he hears it his spirit cries, because /yes/, he isn't crazy, he has a name and it's Harry --  
  
And before he knows it, he's fallen a bit farther, and the curses rachet tighter around his mind and the next time? The next time, resistance will come a second slower, he'll fall to the lies and the pain and the truth and the whispers to just submit and be a nice little magiclessfacelessmindless bit of flesh a little bit faster.  
  
The next time, he won't remember it's his name when something says Harry. 


End file.
